Michael Douglas’ portrayal in HBO’s film was too much for Liberace fans.Claudette Barius/HBO

What did William H. Macy – considered Hollywood’s quintessential WASP – say when the makers of his new film, “Focus,” approached him about playing a gentile mistaken for a Jew after he starts wearing glasses in World War II Brooklyn?

“I said, ‘Guys, this is a great script, but you got the wrong guy,’ ” he recounted the other day. “I think you got to get someone . . . where it makes sense someone could mistake him as being Jewish.

“And [director] Neal Slavin said, ‘You’re missing the whole point. This is a fable and it’s important that you’re not Jewish and that you don’t remotely look Jewish. It’s about people’s perceptions and how intolerance blinds you to seeing the person.’ “

Still, the Oscar nominee (for the larcenous car dealer who engineers his wife’s kidnapping in “Fargo”) was reluctant. So he consulted with his mentor and collaborator, playwright David Mamet.

“I had a nagging fear that having an uber-Lutheran play a victim of anti-Semitism might offend someone, thinking we were trivializing the subject.

“Mamet said, ‘No, no, no. Do it.’ But I still sort of lost my courage a little bit and we decided – at my insistence – that I would darken my [sandy blond] hair and wear dark contact lenses so you don’t have these bright green eyes staring at you.”

Macy thinks the film’s message – the danger of seeing individuals only as members of groups – is more relevant than ever after Sept. 11.

“The extremists in the Arab world look at us as the devil. They see us as representatives of something they hate so they can objectify us, justify killing us. At the same time, there have been attacks against Arab-Americans in the United States. If we’ve learned anything, it’s that violence will beget violence.”

The 51-year-old Miami native is justifiably proud of his 20-year resume, which includes many Mamet plays and major supporting roles in films like “Air Force One,” “Magnolia” and Mamet’s “State and Main.”

“When my daughter was born [in August 2000], it suddenly occurred to me she will see all of the movies I’ve ever made eventually, and it strengthened my resolve not to do despicable films.”

Despicable films?

Macy won’t name titles, but defines them as “a film that has mindless violence in it [or] equates humor with violence; films that mix up sex and violence or present something abnormal as normal. I am against censorship . . . but I feel people should be held responsible for the films they make. Films that have these incredible body counts, I think they’re stupid and mindless and I really disrespect the people who make them.”

But he defends “Jurassic Park III,” an action film that represented his first leading role in a big-budget summer blockbuster.

“It might be stupid, but it’s not mindless,” he said with a laugh. “It doesn’t attempt much, but it absolutely pays off. As I said to my friends, ‘The dinosaur stuff is great, and when the people talk, it’s not lame. Perhaps that’s damning with faint praise.”

As much as he loves movies and theater, Macy is focusing on TV for now.

He plays a salesman with cerebral palsy in “Door to Door,” the seventh made-for-TV movie he’s starred in and written with his partner, Steve Schachter.

And he’s hoping CBS will pick up “Put-in-Bay,” a pilot he and Schachter wrote for Macy’s wife, actress Felicity Huffman.

“I want to get into network television, not as a regular but as a recurring character, because I really want to work with my wife,” he said. “In the pilot, I play a folk singer who’s so bad, he gets fired.

“I figure I could appear in 8 to 10 episodes a year. We’ve just started building a house, and a little extra income wouldn’t hurt.”